Life
by dysprositos
Summary: When they told Clint that Natasha was dead, he didn't believe them. After all, Phil had been dead. Stark had been dead. Hell, Thor had been dead. The whole being dead thing apparently wasn't a terminal condition, because all of them were fine now. And Clint knew that Natasha would never let Stark beat her at anything—including staying alive—so he knew that she wasn't dead.


**Warnings: language, character death. This is not a happy story.**

**Thanks to my beta, irite, for helping me clear up a few points and for being generally fantastic.**

**I do not own The Avengers.**

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When they told Clint that Natasha was dead, he of course didn't believe them.

After all, Phil had been dead. Stark had been dead. Hell, Thor had been dead. The whole being dead thing apparently wasn't a terminal condition, because all of them were fine now. Sure, Phil had a terrifying scar that took up half his chest, and Stark came home from Afghanistan and became a superhero, and Thor had lost his brother, but really? They were fine.

And Clint knew that Natasha would never let Stark beat her at anything—including staying alive—so he _knew _that she wasn't dead. Or, if she was, she wasn't going to stay that way. No one else did.

When they brought him to see her body, he didn't believe them then, either.

Rogers had looked the same way, once. Cold to the touch. Pale. Still. And now he was running a team of goddamn superheroes, like that was normal. He'd come back from death. He was fine.

Natasha would be fine, too.

Gunshot wound to the head notwithstanding.

Banner, after all, had survived a gunshot wound to the head. Natasha wouldn't let one injury beat her; she never had before.

When they eulogized her, though, Clint began to have doubts. He listened to the people who spoke at her funeral—Fury, Phil, Rogers—in a daze. When it was his turn to say a few words, to address the congregation, he found he couldn't say anything. Instead, he stood at the pulpit near the casket, itchy in his dress shirt and tie, in utter silence. He didn't want to play anymore, didn't want to keep this farce up. Hadn't they all taken this far enough? Wasn't it time to stop the charade? To let Natasha come laughing around the corner and mock him for even thinking for one second that they might be right?

Clint decided he wasn't going to go along with it anymore. He wasn't going to keep pretending that his best friend was gone forever. That the most important person in his life had just vanished. That one of the pillars of his whole existence had shattered.

So he stalked out of the chapel and into the cold November air, whipping his phone out of his pocket as he walked.

He dialed the familiar number, leaning against the brick wall of the church, trying to stay out of the misting rain.

The phone rang and rang in his ear, but Natasha didn't answer. He just got her voicemail, the same message it had been since she'd gotten a phone. "This is Romanoff. Leave a message."

Clint did. "Nat. Jesus Christ. What the hell? Nat, they're saying you're _dead_, they're saying they're going to put you in the fucking _ground_, Nat, but they _can't_. You're not dead. You can't be dead. Stark's not dead. Phil's not. Rogers isn't. Fuck, Nat." He took a deep, gasping breath. "Nat, I swear to God. You promised. You said it was going to be you and me. Together. That's what we _agreed _on, so if you fucking _left me _here, I—"

A hand landed on his shoulder. Startled, Clint turned to face whoever had decided to interrupt him.

It was Phil. Gently, he pried the phone out of Clint's hand and ended the phone call, making eye contact. "Barton. Clint. She's...Natasha is _dead_, Clint."

Clint flinched back. "No."

"Yes," Phil insisted, voice firm. "She is. I'm sorry, but she _is_. Her last mission went south, Barton. Her cover got blown. It was bad luck, and it shouldn't have happened—"

No. Clint wasn't going to listen to this bullshit. "Fuck that." Really? Bad luck? Natasha was better than bad luck. Natasha looked bad luck in the eyes and laughed in its face. "Fuck that, and fuck you." He whirled around, briefly observing the growing crowd of people just outside the church doors. Damn it, he was making a scene. He needed to calm down; he wasn't the guy who drew attention to himself like this. Clint took a deep breath, ignoring how it caught in his throat.

Phil grabbed Clint by the shoulder, leading him away from the onlookers, towards his car. Softly, he repeated, "Clint. I'm sorry. She's dead."

"Stop saying that!" Clint snarled, ripping his arm out of Phil's grip. "Why won't you stop saying that?"

"Because it's true," Phil answered evenly, stepping up to the passenger's side door and opening it. "Get in."

Clint ignored him. "No. It's not true," Clint denied. He pointed back towards the crowd, where Stark was pushing his way towards the front. "That asshole is alive. You're alive. Rogers is alive. Fuck, Banner shot himself in the _head _and he's alive. So why should Nat be dead? She's not any different than they are!"

Phil sighed. "Clint...that's just life."

That was the worst fucking thing Clint had ever heard in his life, and he'd heard some doozies. "Yeah. Right." He looked up, meeting Phil's eyes. "Phil, she promised. She said she was going to be careful. Damn it, we agreed! We were going to die together, covering each others' backs! That was the goddamn _plan_, Phil! She wouldn't just break a promise like that!" He needed to make Phil understand, needed to make him stop saying that shit. This joke had gone on long enough.

But Phil just shook his head. "No, Barton, she wouldn't have. But she didn't get to make that choice. Someone else made it for her. And now she's gone."

Slowly, slowly, the absolute certainty Clint had felt began to crack. Phil wouldn't lie to him. Fury, yeah. Hill, probably. But Phil? Clint knew he could trust him. Phil had been there and had Clint's back since his first days at SHIELD, when he'd just been a scared shitless, punk-ass kid. And Phil was saying Nat was dead. That she was gone. That she had broken her promise because someone else had taken the choice from her.

That _was _the only way Nat would break a promise, if someone else interfered.

Suddenly, Clint's knees buckled. He caught himself on the open door of Phil's car, and then Phil was guiding him inside the vehicle. "Easy, Barton. Easy."

When all of Clint's body parts were in the car, Phil shut the door and went over to the driver's side. He got in and put the key in the ignition before turning to Clint. "Are you okay?"

Clint wasn't. It felt suddenly as if someone had placed a massive lead weight on his chest, like he couldn't draw more than shallow breaths. He shook his head quickly once, but that was a mistake. Nausea rushed through him, and he threw the car door open again, managing to get most of his puke outside of the vehicle.

Then he shut the door and leaned back against the seat, swallowing hard against his rebelling stomach.

Natasha was...dead. Phil said so. Phil said so, and so it was true, and that meant that she was gone. She wasn't coming back. Phil had come back. So had Stark. Rogers. Thor. _Everyone _came back, but Natasha wasn't going to.

She'd broken her promise, had gotten herself killed, and she _wasn't coming back_.

He was alone.

Clint tried to take a deep breath, to quell his rising nausea, but his breath turned into a sob halfway through and so he aborted that mission, thinking maybe he could just never breathe again.

That would be all right.

He rocked back against the seat before leaning forward, head between his knees, cramped in the small space of the passenger's seat.

"Breathe, Clint," Phil prompted on his left. "Just breathe."

Clint shook his head, stubborn, trying to ignore the burning in his lungs and the tears that had appeared unbidden, running down his face. But soon, his lungs won out against his self-control and he took a huge, gasping breath.

And then he was talking. "It's not fair! Phil, she promised, and it's not fair, and why isn't she coming back? Why doesn't she get a second chance? Huh? Why not her?"

Phil shrugged helplessly, then offered softly, "Natasha had her second chance, Clint. She's had a third and fourth and fifth chance. She was bound to run out of luck sometime, that's the job."

"The job is bullshit," Clint ground out, jaw clenched. But he knew Phil was right. Both of them were just humans, and they'd both escaped death more than their fair share of times. Sooner or later, well. You could only outrun death for so long.

He leaned his head against the cold glass of the window, trying to calm his breathing. Still, every breath hitched in his chest. Part of him hated breaking down like this, but this was _Phil_, and he'd seen Clint at his worst. Had handled him after fubar missions and through all kinds of other shit. So maybe he could just let go and stop trying to keep an iron grip on himself.

His shoulders began to shake.

Phil reached out a hand and rested it briefly on Clint's back before starting the car. "Yeah. It is bullshit, Clint." He turned the heat on to the warmest setting, then looked back at his passenger. "Do you...do you want to go to the burial? Or should I bring you home?"

Clint sniffled, ashamed of the sound. "I..." Part of him felt like he should go to the cemetery, to see the interment. Pay his last respects to Natasha now. But he didn't know if he could take it. Or if he wanted everyone to see him like this. No. He didn't want that. Didn't want them witness his grief. It felt private, like something that he should hold close to his heart. Like he'd held his friendship with Natasha. "You can drop me off at my place."

Phil shook his head. "I'm not leaving you alone right now. You just lost your best friend."

"She's been dead for days, Phil," Clint pointed out, voice hollow.

"Not to you," Phil answered simply, pulling out of the parking lot and heading towards Clint's apartment.

* * *

Clint went to Natasha's grave for the first time four weeks after she was buried.

He went alone.

And he talked to her, crouching on his haunches next to her headstone.

"You know, I didn't believe them. Fury. Hill. They said you'd died, and I thought they were lying to me." He paused. "Why would I have believed them? Would you? I mean, they lie about everything." He chuckled. "Anyway, I figured they were hiding you in a secret medical bay or something, like they did with Coulson. Even after I saw your body, I thought you were going to come back. Everyone comes back, you know? I guess...I guess we've kind of come to expect that."

He stopped, swallowing the lump in his throat, then resumed, "I still don't think it's fair. But Phil tells me 'that's life,' and I guess I know that. I always have. Just...I thought things would be different. We were _superheroes_, Nat. We're supposed to get a happy ending. You'd probably laugh and tell me I've been watching too many movies, if you were here and heard me saying that. But I just...hoped. I guess."

Crying outright, now, the December wind chapping his cheeks, Clint went on, "We all miss you at the Tower. Stark's still an asshole, and Rogers misses sparring with someone who can actually match him, and Banner says you were teaching him Russian but never got much further than the alphabet. That's too bad. I know you're a good teacher." He smiled briefly. "You're the only reason I passed my Russian language tests at SHIELD. But you knew that."

He stopped, doing a quick scan of the area around him. He was still entirely alone, so he kept going. "I was angry at first. That you'd broken your promise. But I guess it wasn't your fault. It's not like you chose to let some asshole shoot you in the head. I know that's not something you would have wanted. And it's not fair that it happened. That's life, though. Or so Phil says."

"I miss you, too. Obviously. Like I even need to say it."

He stood in silence for a few moments, listening to the wind rustling through the trees. A few cars went by on the nearby street, and snow began to fall in large, wet flakes.

Clint brushed the snow out of his hair. "What happened was bullshit. It's bullshit that you're gone and I'm still here, stuck dealing with Stark's idiocy and Roger's ridiculous training schedule and SHIELD trying to get me to train rookies. It's bullshit, and I'm pissed off about it. But I'm not pissed off at you."

He paused, before concluding, "I'm pissed off, but I think I'm going to be okay. I think. So don't go feeling sorry for me in the afterlife. And don't worry about me." He grinned ruefully, "Your luck ran out, Nat, that's all. Mine can't be that far behind. But that's life, right?"

With that, he roughly wiped his eyes and turned and walked back towards his car, parked outside the cemetery gates.

Yeah, this was life.

And life was bullshit.

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